ABSTRACT
For the last three decades, the “question of the Other” has been one of the most discussed topics in what is referred to in North America as “continental philosophy.” 1 While there are many ways of approaching otherness-since every intellectual project concerned with problems of selfhood and identity must inevitably, even if only by implication, also speak about the Othermajor developments in the conception of alterity have often originated in phenomenology. Due to restrictions of space and limitations that have to do with the enormous dimensions of the intellectual fi eld to be covered for an exhaustive overview, I will limit myself to sketching some fundamental steps that have led to the emergence of the notion of radical alterity, the sincere attempt to think the Other genuinely, that is: as other. 2 Parallel to tracing one possible genealogy of the radical Other I will explore what the respective conceptions of otherness in Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Waldenfels imply for anthropology in general, and for the project of an anthropology of otherness in particular.
